this is clearly a different president obama than the one we saw during the debt ceiling negotiations or even after the midterm elections in 2010 when he felt a little weakened and there was the extension of those bush tax cuts for the wealthy. so i think when you're seeing here is a president who put this on the table, trying to please his base, okay? which got him elected after all. saying, this is my wish list, this is in a perfect world, this is what i would do. i don't think anyone at the white house expected the republicans to say, oh, thank you mr. president, yes, this looks lovely. let's go on and work on a deal. no, that's not what it was. the white house -- this is alfonse gaston a little bit here. and so they're waiting for the republican response. and what they're really talking about, brooke, is getting some kind of a first step. a down payment. ironically they all know what -- in the big picture needs to be done. they know you have to fix entitlements, do something on the tax side, but they're trying to figure out how to get from here to there. >> and let's just stop the